The Companion 018: Ins and Outs
What I've learnt from a year of writing about friendship.
The year 2023 was a good year for me as an individual, a terrible year for many, and a political year that we cannot afford to forget. Going into the new year, solidarity, which I’ve written about before, is still on my mind. I’ll be at the next march for Palestine in central London on the 13 January, and I hope to see friends there too. I’m exploring other ways to lend support and thinking about the fact that in the UK 2024 will be an election year. There’s lots to be getting on with.
It’s been interesting seeing the trend of INs and OUTs emerge on the internet as a way of encapsulating our years. I do find it somewhat fascinating that so many people’s ‘OUTs’ lowkey throw shade at others in their orbit. The phrase ‘say it with your chest’ comes to mind, but we’re all guilty of not having the courage to speak up sometimes. Yesterday, at a football kickabout, a white woman decided to be fascinated with my hair, and at halftime, in front of three others, picked up a handful of my braids, ran her hands down them, and said, ‘Is this heavy? It must be heavy’.
I mumbled, ‘No,’ and rejoined play. Processing the incident as we continued the game, I wished I had said something sharp to her, or simply grabbed a fistful of her hair in return. The last time someone yanked me by the braids during a football match (a foul when I had the ball, during active play), I screamed at her, and I told her to never touch a black woman’s hair again. I felt embarrassed afterwards, as though I had overreacted. But it brought back memories of being at a music festival and having a white guy who had just peed decide to dry his hair in my afro. Long term, I’m glad I spoke up.
I don’t mind people showing interest in my hair — I used to like brushing my white friend’s hair when I was younger as it was so different to mine — and I don’t mind close friends touching it without asking, but I don’t like the sanctity of my space being invaded by strangers nor being treated like a specimen. I don’t like the idea of it happening to other black women because I was too self-conscious to verbalise my discomfort.
Just after the match yesterday, chatting to friends from my football team about the woman who grabbed my hair, we decided that one of our shared goals (no pun intended) for 2024, was to speak up more; whenever it is necessary to do so. If I’m honest, this is always one of my goals and, as evidenced by my varying reactions to white women touching my hair in 2023, something that I can do sometimes, and struggle with at others. But I do fundamentally believe that we have to speak up to create change within our own circles, even it is only incremental.
As I explored earlier this year, we do not have to be friends with bigots, but we also don’t have to write people off as being politically misaligned with us before having a conversation with them.
With all that said, here are my INs and OUTs for 2024, which encapsulate many of my learnings from writing about friendship over the past year, plus some of my favourite quotes from The Companion interviews and a full list of recommendations from myself and my interviewees on the best things to read, listen to or watch on friendship!
IN
Active solidarity (re: Palestine and more)
One-on-one friendships
Treats for everyone
Selflessness
Addressing the issue
Activity friends
Shared values
Phonecalls
Civil partnerships
Romancing your friends
Class consciousness
Responding with care
Living in the moment
OUT
Using the ins and outs to shade friends
Political cowardice
Filling up diaries
Paranoia
Avoiding conflict
Overpromising
Letting white women touch your hair
Attending weddings of distant acquaintances
Vague plans
Endless scrolling
(Hopefully) the Tories
Unecessary travel abroad
The Companion’s best bits of 2023:
“It's not just that people get married, but it's how they invest in it as a priority. It’s important to have different kinds of intimacies and romantic and sexual intimacy should sit alongside everything else.” — Anahit Behrooz
“We can find ourselves dissatisfied with our friends when what we get from a friendship doesn’t feel like it matches up to what we believe we bring.” — Ore Agbaje-Williams
“It's funny how life just supplants a new set of things that sets women in competition with each other. The big thing in your 30s is children or no children. I don't think there's anyone who is having a wholly, wonderful, correct, lovely time about it.” — Jess Brittain
“Friendship itself is a political act, a commitment to forming types of intimacies despite the way in which capitalism seeks to isolate us.” — Dr Laura Forster
“Friendships don't always have to be lifelong. A friendship isn't a failure simply because it ends. And sometimes friendships can come back to you later in life in a different form.” — Elizabeth Day
“Sometimes the ones we love the most are the hardest to be honest with. When the patterns between you become rigid and fixed, change can feel like disruption.” — Nkenna Akuna
“When people are talking about supporting Palestine in terms of friendship, they are trying to evoke an idea of solidarity as mutually empowering.” — Jeremy Gilbert
“If something good could come out of this horror, it would be the importance of friendship and solidarity with each other across borders, across countries that can build a civil movement that can change the world.” — Sarah Beddington
“Nothing is impossible in life when people support each other, dream with each other, and feel each other.” — Fadia Loubani
“It's important to tell your friends that you miss them. Especially when you're apart.” — Shannon Haly
“The people I love follow me in memory, in thought patterns, in how I seek them out in the solo experiences I’m having and the moments that I envisage us having together in future.”
“The way we show up for our friends has to bend and shift, but most often it simply needs to be verbalised and visualised. I care about you. I see you. And I want you to see me.”
“On the part of women, it can become tiring to feel like your efforts and energy to become closer or stay in communication with your male friends aren’t matched. We’ve often been socialised to treat our friendships in contrary ways.”
“I am now a massive advocate for making your friend’s wedding cakes. It’s an intimate and loving gesture. Something you made by hand. That is transient but memorable.”
“I felt sad about all that I had missed, all the stories and corners of his life that I couldn’t know. But also very grateful to have been able to reconnect and for it to have felt so seamless.”
“My current understanding is that friendship isn’t necessary for solidarity to exist but it can absolutely help strengthen it.”
The best things to read, listen to or watch on friendship:
La Cérémonie (1995, film)
By Hook or by Crook (2001, film)
The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020, film)
Close (2022, film)
The Let Down (2017-2019, TV show)
The Hookup Plan (2018-2022, TV show)
We Are Lady Parts (2021-present, TV show)
Yellowjackets (2021-present, TV show)
Big Boys (2022-present, TV show)
The Last of Us (2023-present, TV show)
The Interestings (2013, book)
The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante (2011-2014, books)
Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022, book)
Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy (2022, book)
BFFs by Anahit Behrooz (2023, book)
Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day (2023, book)
Black Friend: Essays by Ziwe Fumudoh (2023, book)